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In the 1860’s Paris streets and monuments
were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, giving it the nick-name "The City of
Light."
In addition it has its own flag, coat of arms and Latin motto: “Fluctuat nec mergitur.”
Which, oddly enough, I think its
translation sums up my career as an Air Whore: “Tossed but not sunk.” Remember, dear reader, at this juncture SIA
was the seventh airline I flew for.
And speaking of flying, I have to go on record that Charles de Gaulle Airport (Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle) was a nightmare to get into or out of even with its parallel, eleven thousand foot, runways. Both the Chinese and French – when it comes to aviation – share this strange penchant for creating arrival and departure procedures as unnecessarily complicated as possible.
And when we got on the ground at “Charley-D,”
the nightmare merely continued. For
Ground Control always assigned us parking at Terminal One, built
in an avant-garde design
of a ten-story-high circular building surrounded by seven satellite buildings,
each with six gates, planted inside circles-within-circles of taxiways. Usually we got a gate at either satellites
“Whiskey,” “Victor” or “Tango,” and invariably got lost while taxiing there. Requiring Ground Control to take us by the
hand and, impatiently, lead us to our gate; telling us to turn left or right,
or backtrack.
Christ I hated that, dear reader, making me feel my 747 was one gigantic
rat inside a monumental French maze.
Technically the airport was scarcely 16 miles northeast of Paris;
however, we consistently got caught in morning, bumper-to-bumper, rush hour
traffic and were looking at a 30 to 45-minute bus ride to the hotel. Something one really wants to experience
after being up all night flying here. This
was part of the “airline glamor,” dear reader, 21 weary airline crew dragging
their butts onto a French bus for a long ride.
Here’s an interesting footnote: I regularly operated to Paris from 1987 to 1992, during that period, on 26th August 1988, Mehran Karimi Nasseri found himself held at Charles de Gaulle airport by immigration. He claimed he was a refugee, except his refugee papers were stolen. After years of bureaucratic wrangling, it was concluded that Nasseri had entered the airport legally, however, he could not be expelled from its walls; lacking any papers, there was no country to deport him to, leaving him in residential limbo. Would you believe, dear reader, he ended up actually living at the airport for 18 years! Think about this poor guy the next time you get stranded at an airport for weather or strikes. Nasseri’s sojourn at “Charley-D” was perhaps the inspiration for the 2004 Tom Hanks’ film: “The Terminal.”
My
old British buddy from SAUDIA, Gordy Poole, who had also joined SIA, tipped me
off to a quaint, reasonably priced place to eat. As Paris is one of the most expensive cities
in the world, where tourists are required to mortgage their children for a
decent meal, Gordy’s tip proved quite useful.
Notre Dame Cathedral stands on an island in the middle of
the River Seine. Alongside is another
island, L’Ile Saint Louis, where, at 41 rue
Saint Louis en l’Ile, resides La Taverne du Sergent Recruteur (The Recruiting Sergeant’s Tavern).
For fifteen bucks (a price unheard of in Paris) one acquires the
following: A 200-year-old tavern resembling a movie set – warped beams,
candlelight and all – offering two bottles of wine, soup of the day, huge baskets
of fresh vegetables, breads, different sausages with pâté
(all of which is unlimited), plus a main course of either salmon, duck confit, roast chicken, or burgundy beef stew.
Afterwards comes an assortment of
cheeses and your choice of desserts.
Consequently,
when dining here, be aware of two problems:
Problem
One: Don’t come late – after 9 P.M. – since
all the waiters will be legless from polishing off customers’ leftover
wine. They’ll get your order wrong and
crash into one another; it’s only funny to watch if you’ve already dined.
Problem two: They automatically
start you off with two bottles of wine – but it’s also unlimited – tempting you
to order more. Usually I went there with
my cockpit crew – so the three of us would begin with six bottles – growing to
eight or ten bottles! When we got out of
there, like the waiters, we were also legless and couldn’t find a taxi to save
our lives. (Could our inebriated state have
had anything to do with this?)
So
we’d usually hoof it back to the hotel - staggering along the River Seine for
navigation purposes – keeping our bleary eyes peeled for two particular
waypoints.
Firstly: The Eiffel Tower (tour Eiffel), which at length would pop up off our left shoulders; indicating we were four-fifths of the way to our hotel.
Secondly:
The Statue of Liberty.
Hold the phone, dear reader! Am I
talking of the copper statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste
Bartholdi, a French sculptor, and built by Gustave Eiffel
- dedicated on 28th October 1886 -
standing 305 feet (base to torch) on Liberty Island at the mouth of New York
Harbor?
In a word: “NO.” I may be drunk...but I’m not that trashed.
My mates and I are hunting for the Statue of Liberty standing at 37 feet-9 inches, on her own little island in the middle of the River Seine (Île aux Cygnes) beside the Grenelle Bridge.
Because off HER left
shoulder stands our 31-story hotel: the Nikko de Paris.
As for the “Hotel Nicky,” it was comparable
to coming home, as I had previously stayed here when flying for SAUDIA, and all
manner of airline crews laid-over here.
It was owned by JAL (Japan Airlines) which provided rather
Japanese-Spartan rooms, and naturally one of the best Japanese restaurants I’ve
ever dined at.
Additionally, as luck would have it, a few of the dancers I had originally met at Madrid, back in 1982, were presently dancing in the chorus at the Moulin Rouge; 82 Boulevard de Clichy.
Oh yes, dear reader, the same haunt of artist Toulouse-Lautrec.
I’d
usually catch the last show - then hook up with the dancers – escorting them to
dinner, and later to the hot spots.
Speaking of
which, the dancers introduced me to one
Parisian cabaret that
originally had been twelve wine cellars
knocked
together, at 12 Avenue George-V ("George Cinq"), called “Le Crazy Horse Saloon“. The
founder, Alain Bernardin, had a
vision, and I quote:
“Magic
is a dream...and what we do with the girls is magic...the magic of lights and
costumes. These are my dreams and fascinations that I put onstage." Mr. Bernardin achieved his goal, as I was utterly fascinated
and hypnotized by his show.
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